COMMONWEALTH CABLES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 73, 3 April 1913, Page 6

COMMONWEALTH CABLES.

SYDNEY VITAL STATISTICS. [By Electric Telegraph—Copyright] [United Press Association.] (Received 9.25 a.m.) Sydney, April 3. The Metropolitan birthrate for March was 30.74, being the highest tor twelve years. The deathrate was 11.85, which is above the last live years’ average. SERIOUS EFFECTS OF HARBOR STRIKE. MEN TO BE PROSECUTED. Four hundred men are out on strike in Darling Harbor yards, which are closed for the present, clerks and officials alone remaining on duty. Enormous quantities of goods are piled up in the yards awaiting delivery. The dislocation of business is being seriously felt, and arrangements are being made to clear away the perishable goods. The strikers’ ranks have been swelled by thirty railwayman, who were working in the Darling Island wheat sheds. The trouble is the outcome of the refusal of the railway commissioner to grant the men’s demand for a 48-hours week instead of the present 102-hours fortnight; also for an increase from 8s to 9s per day in wages, with an overtime rate of time and a half, and other concessions. The Commissioners definitely refused to treat with the strikers until they resume. At a mass meeting of the men the seriousness of their position was pointed out. In view of the regulation which provided for striking, the railwayman lose all their service towards a retiring pension. Some of the strikers have thirty years’ service to their credit.

The meeting appointed a committee to meet the industrial inspector and discuss the situation. It was resolved to allow gatekeepers and watchmen to remain at work to protect the Commissioners’ property. The Hon. Mr Carmichael, after receiving a report from the industrial registrar, declared that the outlook was ugly. There was no chance of work being resumed at present, and he added that he intended to prosecute both the Darling Harbor and ferry strikers.

AN ACTOR KILLED. Oswald Prestno, a member of the Smart Set Theatrical Company!, was killed at Geelong through a motor car colliding with a verandah. MR. F. M. B. FISHER INTER-. ■ ' 1 1 VIEWED. - V.n ‘ .4I- -I } 1,. . ?>■ •‘ ‘ I.■ 1 i Melbourne, , April 3. Mr F. M. B. Fisher, in an interview, ,(loured,.that, there, was a feeling in New Zealand that the Australian tariff was operating against the dominion, and that there was a. preference in favour of English as against New Zealand’s. Besides trade reciprocity, he also desired to discuss the question of reciprocity in Old Age Pensions and the permanent maintenance of a wireless station at the Macquarie Islands.